quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
But the comment was made about combat focus. Do you really think it isn't possible to have a detailed and complex combat system unless the game focouses heavily on combat? What if combat was just part of the game only one of many significant parts?

Iron Chef gave me some great advice about hijacks which I think might apply here. Adapting it to your situation, if you have an element of a game that is deeply detailed and intricate and takes many hours to master, but it's not a core part of what makes you successful in the game, then it might be a hijack (a diversion of the game's overall purpose).

Think about who your demographic is. Who is attracted to very detailed real-time combat systems? Who is going to invest the time to learn the intricacies? My first thought would be fighting game player much more so than Morrowind / RPG players. My gut instinct says that, as a demographic, fighting game players are (as a gross generalization) pugilists who prize twitch gameplay as an exhibition of their skill, and have little need for gameplay which distracts from the pace of a good fight. Is this your audience?

I don't think traditional RPG players appreciate twitch and perfect timing all that much (c.f., jumping puzzles and the collective howl they raise amongst PC RPG players).

Now, here's another angle: As a newbie player (as we are to all games at first), you invest a certain amount of time in the game and receive a return on your investment, in the form of mastery and acknowledged success. In an RPG, you usually don't get the mastery feedback quickly, it takes awhile to level up.

So ask yourself how much time you will request that your players invest, then compare that time with the reward you intend to give them. The reward you intend to give is in the form of content-- gameplay, enemies, situations, events, challenges, etc.

Now, if you require a high upfront investment in time in order to learn an intricate combat system, but don't pay out a corresponding dividend in return, I believe this is one of the ways gamers come to feel cheated. They'll likely complain that the feature was tacked on, or felt empty.

And it couldn't really be any other way unless you had a massive budget and small army. Why? Because as you add any other feature it requires corresponding time, attention and depth. You have a finite resource "pie." The bigger you make any one slice, the smaller the amount left for any other feature. If you add polish to, say, conversation or item creation, that's less time and effort you can spare for intricate death animations, or perfecting sword gameplay or whatever.

So I think if you make a game like Bushido Blade and add a whole layer of other features, you'll either end up with a game where the most rewarding thing to do is fight (because it's so satisfying and detailed and other features pale in comparison), or one where there's a bunch of neat things to do, but combat is frustrating because you don't get enough time to master it or there isn't enough detail in the game world to justify the cost of learning to do it well.



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Just waiting for the mothership...


[edited by - Wavinator on May 18, 2004 6:09:56 PM]

True, I suppose check is more accurate then losing a piece.

But sometime it is advantagous to take a weak hit in order to gain an advantage in a fight.

Also I don''t like the idea of stamina being a sort of shield or hp substitue. Instead I pefer to think of stamina as fuel. Each move takes x points of stamina to perform and getting hit would cause an injury and the loss of y points of stamina. If the character uses up all its stamina, then they start suffing fatigue which reduces their abilites, if fatigue = max stamina then character collapses.

But back to combat and chess.

Intead of just having to actions attack and defense and various special moves as is the standard. I thinking of havin a large number of combat techniques. These techniques would fall under diffrent catagories and have diffrent stats and effects. Consider the chess board there are 16 pieces and 6 kinds of pieces. If each piece would corrispond to diffrent move and each kind would corrisponding to a diffrent type of moves.

So if we had the following unarmed combat types of moves:
Hold
Throw
Punch
Kick
Dodge
Block

and for simplicty sake say there are 8 moves of each type.
The player would choose in advance which combination of 16 moves to have "readied", the choice would be based on what moves they have learned, their characters abilites, personal prefrence and expectations. Those are the moves they will be able to use in combat. Each move is also considered either an attack, defense or a counter. With a succesful counter attacking as a both a defense against the opponents move and an attack on the opponent.

They would then use those moves as part of an overall strategy to defeat their opponent. Moves would be exchanged back and forth in series of move couter-move situations, the would eventualy result in a hit and thus an injury being caused on the that indvidual.

So for instance player one chooses.
8 holds
4 throws
2 dodges
2 blocks

Player two chooses
4 punchs
4 kicks
4 dodges
4 blocks.

-> performs
<- Counters
P2 -> Jab to the Head
P1 <- Wrist Lock
P2 <- Arm Escape
P1 -> Arm Lock = hit

Injury check results in a server injury causing a broken arm to player 2.

So in that fictional exchange each player takes turns performing an attack or defense, as the the situation dictates. There would also be an advantage that is increased by each move until a character can score. Think of it as a scale with each move either adding to your side or taking away from the opponents side until one sides advantage is sufficent to score a hit and injury.






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"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Let me get this straight, though: Is this a turn-based system or a real-time system? Turn-based means you can probably do things like you describe above, but in real-time, you''d need a lot of auto-blocking, because only the quickest twitch players can avoid getting hit for any amount of time, and with "realistic" damage, swordfights and gunfights will probably last about as long as they do in real life. That''s not long, since the participants generally either suffer a terrible wound or escape in a few seconds.

I thats really a independent consideration at isn''t really nessary to consider, as long as both character take turns performing actions it should workd. It could be be done turned based, or solow motion realtime with say each character having a reaction time, which is adjusted to deterime the number of seconds the player has between the opponent starting their action and being, with the player having to respond in during that time. with that you could even have replay shown at normal speed. Or you could remove the player entirly from the equation and have the entire battle done through intellegent agents.

quote:
That''s another issue we should address. Do you want quasi-realistic fighting, or awesome, Jet Li movie fighting?

Good point, Like all games true realisim isn''t desirable so it would be KungFu Movie style fighting. Which while having many unrealistic moves is more interesting to watch and particapte in.


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"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

quote:Original post by Raduprv
IMHO, not a good idea.
Games are not meant to be realistical, they are meant to be fun.
It''s not fun if you can kill (or be killed) in a single shot.
I don''t know what kind of game you are trying to make, but unless it is a massively strategy game (offline game), players might not like it. If you have a RTS or TBS, on the other hand, this cna eb nice, since losing one unit usually doesn''t have very large implications. But "Game Over" in one hit is not nice.

I cant believe someone said this, look at everquest!!! 80% of the monsters in the world can kill you in one hit, even at the highest level, its nearly impossible to go into a raid without dying, the sleeper, quad attacks for 70,000 hit points, the most I have ever seen on a character is like 9000, lol! that makes games fun, and realistic!!!

theres my 2 copper...



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True, it could be played like a CCG, you have 3 types of cards attacks, blocks, and counters. Each card would have a target area of the body say seven areas in total. Each card would also have a style these represents the difffrent martial arts schools and which the technigue belongs to. Some styles would be weapon styles other hand to hand. Of course there would be no point in using a weapon style unless the character had that weapon.

It could lead to some intersting matches like fan vs staff.

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"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave